And many other signs truly did Jesus
The Evangelic record
I. ITS PARTIALNESS (John 20:30).
1. Christ was a worker. He had a wonderful mission to discharge within a brief time. Every day was crowded with deeds.
2. These deeds were signs
(1) Of His preternatural might.
(2) Of His matchless philanthropy.
(3) Of His immeasurable possibilities.
3. The recorded signs were only a small portion of what He accomplished; but
(1) They are sufficient for our purpose.
(2) They suggest a wonderful history for future study.
II. ITS PURPOSE (John 20:31). The facts of Christ’s life are written in order
1. To reveal Him.
(1) His power.
(2) His love.
(3) His transcendent excellence.
2. That men may believe in Him. How could they believe in Him of whom they have not heard. Faith in Him is at once
(1) The most essential, and
(2) The most practicable of all faiths. It is easier to believe in a person than in a proposition, and to believe in a transcendently good person than in any other.
3. That through faith men may have the highest life. What is this: Supreme sympathy with the supremely good. Man lost this at the Fall, and the loss is his guilt and ruin. The mission of Christ is to resuscitate it, and to fill souls with the love of God. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The miracles of Christ
1. “Signs” are miracles--a branch of evidence to which our religion appeals. The sufficiency of this evidence appears from universal acknowledgment. That the authors of all false religions have pretended miracles to establish their authority does not weaken the argument; for there could be no counterfeit coin were there no genuine mintage.
2. But what is a miracle? Not every extraordinary event, although popularly so denominated. There may be extraordinary floods, droughts, earthquakes, meteors, &c., and yet all may be resolved into natural laws operating under peculiar circumstances, without any special interposition of Deity. Hence, not every portent which an ignorant people call miraculous, is to be clothed with that character; nor every occasional remarkable effect which cannot be resolved into some known natural law, as the force of imagination in curing certain kinds of diseases and infirmities. But a miracle is the effect of the immediate interposition of God, contrary to or above the ordinary laws of nature, and that for the confirmation of some doctrine or message as from Himself.
3. The miracles of Jesus are presented to our consideration.
I. AS BEARING THE UNEQUIVOCAL CHARACTER OF REAL MIRACLES, AND THEREFORE AUTHENTICATING THE MISSION AND CLAMS OF CHRIST. Consider
1. Their number. A solitary instance might be accounted for by mistake, deception, exaggeration, or coincidence. But the number “of the signs which Jesus did” shuts out this objection. Many instances are recorded with names, places, times, &c.; whilst we have instances in which our Lord healed “multitudes.”
2. Their publicity. They were wrought in the sight of multitudes in broad day, and under the eye of a whole nation for nearly four years.
3. The character of the witnesses. Even the disciples were not over credulous; for Christ was the opposite of Him whom their imaginations had depicted as the true Messiah. In the multitude there was no eagerness to proclaim a lowly peasant, the Son of David, the King of Israel. And even the Pharisees and Sadducees, whose eye was sharpened by the mixed passions of hatred, envy, and fear, never denied the facts, and had to account for them by Satanic agency.
4. The nature of the works themselves. No class of events could bear stronger evidence of a supernatural character. They are not of a nature to be referred to the effects of imagination, occult laws of nature, never till then developed, nor to fortunate coincidences. “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.”
5. In the very age and places where these “signs” were wrought, multitudes believed on Christ who had motives for unbelief but none for credulity; and their conversion can only be accounted for from the overwhelming evidences of the real occurrence of the miracles upon which Christ placed the proof of His Divine mission.
II. AS ACCOMPANIED WITH INTERESTING CIRCUMSTANCES, AND AS MINISTERING POINTS OF IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION. In the works of Christ there are
1. Miracles which declare His Divinity.
(1) He wrought them, not in the name of another, but in His own. “I say unto thee, Arise,” &c. This distinguishes Him from prophets and apostles.
(2) He associates a miracle of healing with His authority as God to forgive sins.
(3) When He drove the buyers and sellers out of the Temple, He claimed as His own that Temple in which He often appeared as a common worshipper.
(4) And when He cast out devils, they are sometimes constrained to confess Him as the Son of God.
2. Miracles of impressive majesty. He was to appear among men in the utmost lowliness of condition, yet He was to gather a people who were to receive Him as, “the Son of God.” Such a task had been too difficult for the strongest faith, had there not been “signs” which should manifest His “glory.” The cloud which enveloped Him was dark; but it was the cloud of the Shechinah. Under His benediction bread multiplies, and thousands are fed; He walks upon the sea, and the yielding element sinks not beneath His footsteps; amidst the uproar of a storm He utters His simple command, “Peace, be still!” and the winds hear, and die away. At the mouth of the sepulchre He cries, “Lazarus, come forth!” And when finally He, the
Conqueror of death in His own dominion, appears, Thomas naturally exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”
3. Miracles of tenderness. The works of our Lord were uniformly benevolent; but some of them were characterized by circumstances of peculiar compassion, e.g., the feeding of the multitudes; the healing of the nobleman, and the raising of the widow’s son, &c.
4. Miracles designed to impress upon our minds some important doctrine. When our Lord provided for the tribute-money, He intended to teach subjection to fiscal laws. When He drove the traders from the Temple, He taught that the places and the acts of worship are to be kept free from the intrusions of secular things. The miraculous draught of fishes was designed to indicate the success of the apostles in their work of evangelizing all nations, &c.
5. Miracles involving the duty and necessity of faith; that is, a personal trust in His power and mercy, as in the case of the leper, the centurion’s servant, the child tormented with an evil spirit (Mark 9:1-50.), and the Syro-Phoenician woman.
6. Typical miracles, which symbolize something higher than themselves, great and illustrious as they were.
(1) Our Lord’s absolute power over nature indicated that the government of the natural world was placed in His hands as Mediator.
(2) Devils were subject to Him, which showed that He came to establish a dominion which should finally subvert the empire of Satan.
(3) When He was transfigured, He exhibited a type of that glory into which He was Himself about to enter, and into which He purposed to introduce His disciples.
(4) When the band came to apprehend Him, and He by putting forth a supernatural power arrested the arresters, He showed with what ease He can confound His adversaries.
(5) When, whilst in the act of dying, He rent the earth, and opened the graves, so that many of the saints came forth, He gathered the first-fruits of His people from the grave. And the miracle of His own resurrection was the type and pattern of our triumph over death.
Conclusion: Learn
1. The practical character of the holy Scriptures. “These are written that ye might believe”; but many other works were done “which are not written in this book.” Enough, however, is recorded for practical uses; the rest are reserved to the revelations of a future state. Let us remember that we are rather to improve what is recorded, than repine that not more has been written to gratify our curiosity.
2. The end for which they are written, “that ye might believe”, &c. These are the chief foundations of the Christian faith. “The Son of God” is the Divine designation; “the Christ” is the official name of the Redeemer of the world.
3. The consequence of a true faith in Christ is life. A mere doctrinal faith, however correct, cannot of itself lead to this result; but the personal trust which is exercised by a penitent heart obtains the life which is promised in Christ. The sentence of condemnation is reversed; and spiritual life, the result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, becomes the subject of present, daily, and growing experience. By this let us try our faith. (R. Watson.)
The silence of Scripture:
It is a very good old canon that “in every work” we are to “regard the writer’s end,” and if that simple principle had been applied to this Gospel, a great many of the features in it which have led to some difficulty would have been naturally explained. But this text may be applied very much more widely than to John’s Gospel.
I. We have here THE INCOMPLETENESS OF SCRIPTURE.
1. Take this Gospel first. It is not meant to be a biography; it is avowedly a selection, under the influence of a distinct dogmatic purpose. There is nothing in it about Christ’s birth, baptism, and selection of apostles, ministry in Galilee, parables, ethical teaching, and the Lord’s supper. Nearly half of it is taken up with the incidents of one week at the end of His life, and of and after the Resurrection. Of the remainder--by far the larger portion consists of conversations which axe hung upon miracles that seem to be related principally for the sake of these.
2. And when we turn to the other three, the same is true. Why was it that after the completion of the Scriptural canon there sprang up apocryphal gospels, full of childish stories of events which people felt had been passed over with strange silence? Is it not strange that the greatest event in the world’s history should be told in such brief outline? Put the Gospels down by the side of the biography of any man that has a name at all, and you will feel their incompleteness as biographies. And yet, although they be so tiny that you might sit down and read them all in an evening over the fire, is it not strange that they have stamped on the mind of the world an image so deep and so sharp, of such a character as the world never saw elsewhere?
3. And then, if you turn to the whole Book, the same thing is true. The silence of Scripture is quite as eloquent as its speech.
(1) Think, e.g., how many things are taken for granted which one would not expect to be taken for granted in a book of religious instruction: the Being of a God; our relations to Him; our moral nature, and the future life. Look at how the Bible passes by, without one word of explanation, the difficulties which gather round some of its teaching: the Divine nature of our Lord, e.g., the three Persons in the Godhead; the mystery of prayer; or of the difficulty of reconciling the Omnipotent will of God with our own free will, or of the fact of Christ’s death as the atonement for the sins of the whole world. Observe, too, how scanty the information on points on which the heart craves for more light: e.g., the future life!
(2) Nor is the incompleteness of Scripture as a historical book less marked. Nations and men appear on its pages abruptly, rending the curtain of oblivion, and then they disappear. It has no care to tell the stories of any of its heroes, except for so long as they were the organs of that Divine breath. It is full of gaps about matters that any sciolist or philosopher or theologian would have filled up for it.
II. THE MORE IMMEDIATE PURPOSE WHICH EXPLAINS ALL THESE INCOMPLETENESSES.
1. To produce in men’s hearts faith in Jesus as the Christ and as the Son of God.
(1) The Evangelist avows that His work is a selection determined by the doctrinal purpose to represent Jesus as the Christ, the Fulfiller of all the expectations and promises of the old Covenant, and as the Son of God. And so it is ridiculous in the face of this statement for “critics” to say: “The author of the fourth Gospel has not told us this, that, and the other incident therefore, He did not know it, consequently this Gospel is not to be trusted”; and others might draw the conclusion that the other three Evangelists are not to be trusted because they do give it us; a blunder which would have been avoided if people had listened when he said: “I knew a great many things about Jesus Christ, but I did not put them down here because I was not writing a biography, but preaching a gospel.”
(2) But that is just as true about the whole New Testament. The four Gospels are written to tell us these two facts about Christ, and the rest of the New Testament is nothing more than the working out of their theoretical and practical consequence.
(3) As for the Old Testament whatever may be the conclusion as to dates and authorship, and whatever a man may believe about verbal prophecies, there is stamped unmistakably upon the whole system an attitude towards “good things to come,” and of a Person who will bring them. “They that went before, and they that followed after, cried, Hosanna! Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” That Christ towers up above the history of the world and the process of revelation, like Mount Everest among the Himalayas. To that great peak all the country on the one side runs upwards, and from it all the valleys on the other descend; and the springs are born there which carry verdure and life over the world.
2. Christ, the Son of God, is the centre of Scripture; and the Book is a unity, because there is driven right through it, like a core of gold, either in the way of prophecy and onward-looking anticipation, or in the way of history and grateful retrospect, the reference to Christ, the Son of God.
(1) And all its fragmentariness, its carelessness about persons, are intended, as are the slight parts in a skilful artist’s handiwork, to emphasize the beauty and the sovereignty of that one Central Figure on which all lights are concentrated, and on which the painter has lavished all the resources of his art.
(2) But it is not merely in order to represent Jesus as the Christ of God that these things are written, but that representation may become the object of our faith. Had the former been its sole intention, a theological treatise, e.g., would have been enough. But, if the object be that men should rest their sinful souls upon Him as the Son of God and the Christ, then there is no other way to accomplish that but by the history of His life and the manifestation of His heart. And so let us learn the wretched insufficiency of a mere orthodox creed, and on the other hand, the equal insufficiency of a mere creedless emotion.
III. THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF THE WHOLE. Scripture is not given to us merely to make us know something about God in Christ, nor only in order that we may have faith in the Christ thus revealed to us, but that we may “have life in His name.”
1. “Life” is deep, mystical, inexplicable by any other words than itself. It includes pardon, holiness, well-being, immortality, Heaven; but it is more than they all.
2. This life comes in our dead hearts and quickens them by union with God. That which is joined to God lives. You can separate your wills and your spiritual nature from Him, and thus separated you are “dead in tresspasses and in sins.” And the message which comes there is life “in His name”; i.e., in that revealed character of His by which He is made known to us as the Christ and the Son of God.
3. Union with Him in His Sonship will bring life into dead hearts. He is the true Prometheus who has come from Heaven with the fire of the Divine life in the reed of His humanity, and He imparts it to us all if we will. He lays Himself upon us, as the prophet laid himself on the little child in the upper chamber; and lip to lip, and beating heart to dead heart, He touches our death, and it is quickened into life.
4. The condition on which that great Name will bring to us life is simply our faith. Do trust yourself to Him, as He who came to fulfil all that prophet, priest, and king, sacrifice, altar, and temple of old times prophesied and looked for? Do you trust in Him as the Son of God who comes down to earth that we in Him might find the immortal life which He is ready to give? If you do, then the end that God has in view in all His revelation, has been accomplished for you. If you do not it has not. You may admire Him, be ready to call Him by many appreciative names, but unless you have learned to see in Him the Divine Saviour of your souls, you have not seen what God means you to see. But if you have, then all other questions about this Book, important as they are in their places, may settle themselves as they will; you have got the kernel, the thing that it was meant to bring you. Many an erudite scholar, who has studied the Bible all his life, has missed the purpose for which it was given; and many a poor old woman in her garret has found it. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Things not written and things written
Among thoughtful readers biography is the most popular branch of literature. It is popular in the best sense. It does not captivate the intellect of sensuousness at the expense of the reflective mind. Nor does it stimulate a fugitive moment to be followed by a lapse into deadness of sensibility. But it is popular by virtue of a genuine human quality that delights in a knowledge of others, and passes from their fellowship into a truer and wiser communion with its own private heart. Books are the best interpreters of the race, and biographies are the best of books. No wonder, then, that the basis of Christianity, as a revelation of infinite wisdom, is laid in the biography of the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice
I. The statement THAT THAT RECORD OF OUR LORD’S LIFE IS FRAGMENTARY, AND, AS TO ITS DETAILS, INCOMPLETE. The narrative, though four minds wrought on it most sympathetically and skillfully, is not exhaustive. Obviously, the limitation was a part of the plan, for it is uniform, no one of the evangelists transcending a boundary tacitly acknowledged. Nor is this restraint arbitrary as to its mode of action. Observe, then, that this restraint is not isolated as to one class of facts or to any special phase of Christ’s varied ministrations. It covers all. If we instance the miracles, only thirty-two are given, while we have many allusions to miraculous acts in such words as “He healed many” and “healing every sickness and every disease among the people.” We have the Sermon on the Mount, the discourses reported by St. John, and numerous parables, but His preaching is frequently spoken of in a general way, as “He preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee.” Of His private instructions, few examples are mentioned, while His domestic life during the three years of His ministry is dimly outlined. The eyes of those who “beheld His glory” saw more than they reported; and the hand of vigorous description, held in check by a higher Power, was allowed only such freedom of sweep as was consistent with the basic principle of New Testament literature. And what was that principle? Stated in a general way, it was the principle of biography as distinct from history. Biography proposes to interest us in a character. Everything is subordinate to that ruling idea. On this ground, then, we see the philosophy involved in the constructive art of the evangelists. They have but one end in view, and that is to describe a character. By reason of this end, their art must be exclusive no less than inclusive. Exclusive it must be, so as to shut off every divergence in the direction of history. Inclusive it will be, in order to do justice to the character portrayed. But this view may be expanded to a much wider reach. Not only had the evangelists to represent a very unique character in its human relations and aspects, but also the Divine nature underlying this character and imparting a peculiar significance to each and all its manifestations. If the Lord Jesus was the perfected type of humanity, He was also the image of God, the “express image” of the Father and “the brightness of His glory.” We are so constituted as to need images. Without them, the mind is inert. The sense-organs are inlets to certain images. Taken into the imagination, they are elaborated into endless shapes of beauty and splendour. Not a faculty, not even the conscience, is independent of them, and the most subtle of all mental operations--a process of abstraction--is an ultimate refinement of some concrete and pictorial idea. To this law of mind, Christ conformed when He appeared amongst men as the image of the Father. This being assumed, the evangelists come before us in a new attitude as biographers. Must the ordinary and accepted art-conditions of biography be fulfilled? Yes; for Christ is amen among men. But He is also a perfect man, an ideal of the human race. If so, the skill of biographical portraiture must be enhanced to meet the exceptional requirement. Is that all? Nay: He is not only an ideal man, but the Divine Man. St. John states the generic idea of them all when He says: “Not written” and “these are written.” Inspiration in them reveals itself in two ways: first, they carry the human heart of composition to its highest attainable point, and, secondly, they advance beyond the line of supreme human excellence. “Not written” applies to whatever would over excite the senses and the intellect acting through the senses. “Not written” refers to all that would address curiosity, the love of Novelty, and the strong proclivity to sensational gratification. “Not written” includes every activity of the imagination that terminates in self-luxury and expends itself in emotions that vanish when the thrill of treacherous nerves has subsided. “Not written” embraces that plethora of argument and logic by means of which no choice is left to the self-determining power of the soul, and its beliefs are created for it and not by its own freedom. “Not written” asserts the truth, that the inner eye may be dazzled, confused, irritated, and, at last, blinded, till it is “dark with excessive light.” And, hence, the art of the evangelist fell back into the previous method of the Lord Jesus, who uniformly acted on the law involved in “not written.” Therefore it was that He who spake as never man spoke adhered so rigidly to the wisdom of moderation. But, on the other hand, St. John says that certain things “are written,” and, hence, we inquire why are “these” written? The answer is
II. THAT THE LORD JESUS IS PRESENTED BY MEANS OF “THESE” THINGS AS THE OBJECT OF SAVING FAITH. St. John is clear and full: “That ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.” The object of the evangelists was not to give the history of Christ, but the personality of Christ as seen in His Divine character. A fixed principle of selection governs the evangelists in the incidents they narrate. The type of facts so chosen.is invariable. There is not a solitary exception. All these facts are typical of Him as the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Divine Redeemer of our race; and they ever converge to one point--faith in Him as the Saviour of sinners. So then in the things “not written” and in those “written;” in the spirit and mode of the narration; there is one end to which every fact is relative and necessary; viz., faith in Christ. Study Christ’s life in order to see how wisely and beneficiently He uses the acts of others to commend faith in Himself. This is one of the highest charms of His biography for this feature makes it our biography as well as His. Does He heal the centurion’s servant? Jesus stands aside, as it were, and puts the centurion’s faith in the foreground of the scene. “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel” (Matthew 8:10). So in the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman: “O woman, great is thy faith” (Matthew 15:28). One of the most striking Chapter s in the Bible is the eleventh of Hebrews, which exhibits in a historic collocation the wonders of faith. Its illustrations, taken from successive ages of the Church, follow in stirring rapidity, and the summons, “By faith,” allow no break or lapse in attention. See, then, His complete adaptedness to man as the object of saving faith. If we believe in God surely we may and can believe in Him. Nor can we wonder that He reserved (see chap. 14.) this special mode of address to consummate the teaching of faith in Himself. The basis of faith had been laid, the superstructure built up, and now the final touch of strength and beauty is added: “Ye believe in God; believe also in Me.” Say you, that man is wrecked and ruined? So He is; utterly and hopelessly crushed by sin. But the grandeur of His place in the universe survives, the idea of humanity attests its imperishability in the midst of overthrow, and man walks forth from the gates of Eden a sublimer possibility than when he entered on its magnificence. Ages before the atonement was a fact it was a truth; and one of its glorious characteristics--the most indicative indeed of its Divineness, next to the Godhead of the atoning sufferer, was the power of the doctrine in anticipation of the accomplished reality. How shall we explain this phenomenon? It is to be accounted for by the position that faith occupies in the scheme of redemption. On this ground we see why the Abraham of a rude and idolatrous age could become the father of the faithful, and why Moses should transcend all statesmen and legislators. Through the senses to the soul was the law of Adamic life. Exactly in accord with this economy, “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” forbidden to their taste, was “good for food,” “pleasant to the eyes” and “to be desired to make one wise.” The temptation was on the level of Adam’s dignity and it addressed itself directly to the foremost peculiarities of his constitution. So thus the law in Christ is through the spirit to the soul and its companion senses. Necessarily, therefore, faith is the instrumental means of salvation, since faith is the only possible organ through which the higher nature in man can act, and by which it can be developed. And hence the declaration of John 1 John 5:4.): “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” It overcomes the senses, wherein dwells in a fastness as old as Eden and as mighty as “the god of this world,” the tyranny of evil. It overcomes their lusts and appetites. If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, we “have life through His name.” To believe in Him is to believe in His Sonship as divinely, eternally, exclusively His Sonship, and in His humanity as “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” The two natures met and united in Him; they formed one Person; and that Person, after a life of humiliation exceptional in the records of humanity, and a life of service and ministration in all the offices of intelligence, philanthropy, and goodness, still more remarkable in the annals of the race, died as differently from all other deaths as His life had been unlike all other lives. To believe in Him is to believe that His death was vicarious, propitiatory, and satisfying as to all the needs of fallen man, and all the requirements of infinite truth, justice, and holiness. To believe in Him is to believe in the unabated sovereignty of law. Love is never supreme above law, but supreme through law. To believe in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, is to believe, not in mere truths and sentiments, nor simply in doctrines and duties, but in Him whose gracious and ever-blessed personality is the fount whence flows the force of all truth; the charm of all beauty; the wisdom of all knowledge; the tenderness of all benevolence; the sweetness of all sympathy; the largeness of all magnanimity, and the loftiness of all heroism, in the currents of this world’s arteries, and in each and every one of the channels of this new-made universe. To believe in Him is to render repentance efficient to its end, so that they who mourn find a beatitude in their tears. (A. A. Lipscombe, D. D.)
The main matter
I. THE DESIGN OF ALL SCRIPTURE IS TO PRODUCE FAITH. There is no text in the whole book which was intended to create doubt. Doubt is a seed self-sown, or sown by the devil, and it usually springs up with more than sufficient abundance without our care. Holy Scripture is the creator of a holy confidence by revealing a sure line of fact and truth. Observe, no part of Holy Scripture was written
1. To magnify the writer of it. Many human hooks are evidently intended to let you see how profound are the thoughts of their authors or how striking is their style. The inspired authors lose themselves in their theme, and hide themselves behind their Master. A most striking instance of this is found in St. John’s gospel. John was a man above all others fitted to write the life of Christ; and yet he has left out many interesting facts which the others have recorded, who did not actually see the facts as he did. He is silent because his speech would not serve the end it aimed at. And the most striking point is this--he omits, as if of set purpose, those places of the history in which he would have shone--the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, &c. What a lesson is all this to us who write or speak for God!
2. To present a complete biography of Christ. Observe the difference between John and an ordinary biographer. I can point you to biographies stuffed full of letters and small talk, which might as well have been forgotten. How different here! The signs and wonders which Christ did are not written to make a book; they are not even written that you may be informed of all that Jesus did; these are written with the end--“that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” Matthew leaves out everything that does not bring out Christ in connection with the kingdom. Luke brings forth Jesus as the man; but when John brings forth Jesus as the Son of God he omits numbers of details that show our Lord in other aspects.
3. For the gratification of the most godly and pious curiosity. I would like to have acted to our Lord as Boswell did to Johnson. But the Holy Ghost did not send his servants to gather up interesting details and curious facts. You shall be told that which shall lead you to believe Christ to be the Son of God, but no more.
4. With the view of setting before us a complete example. It is true that the gospel sets before us a perfect character, and we are bound to imitate it; but that was not the first or chief design of the writers. Good works are best promoted, not as the first, but as the second thing. They come as the result of faith. See how John all through keeps to his design. His book contains a series of testimonies borne by persons led to faith in Jesus as the Christ. It begins with Andrew’s confession--“We have found the Messias,” and ends with Thomas’s--“My Lord and my God.”
II. THE GREAT OBJECT OF TRUE FAITH IS JESUS CHRIST. The text does not say, “These are written that ye might believe the Nicene or the Athanasian creed.” First, I am to believe in Jesus that He is the Christ, promised Messiah, anointed of God to deliver the human race. Next that He is the Son of God--not in the sense in which men are sons of God, but as the only begotten Son of God. Put the two together, that He, the Divine One, became man and was sent into the world to redeem us, and we have the right idea of Immanuel--God with us.
1. Believe this to be a matter of fact.
2. Accept it for yourself.
3. Yield yourself up to the grand truth which you have received.
4. Receive Jesus as being the Christ and the Son of God on the ground of the written Word. “These are written,” &c. “Oh,” says one, “I could believe, but I do not feel as I ought.” What have your feelings to do with the truth of the statement that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God? Experience cannot make a thing true; and frames and feelings cannot make a thing to be a lie which is in itself true.
III. THE TRUE LIFE OF A SOUL LIES IN CHRIST JESUS AND COMES TO THAT SOUL THROUGH FAITH IN HIM.
1. When a man has been found guilty of death, if by any means that sentence is removed, he obtains life, life in its judicial form. That is the first form of life that every man has who believes.
2. This judicial life is attended with an imparted life. God the Holy Spirit is with believers, breathing into them a new, holy, heavenly life.
3. This life grows. It continues to gather strength, and as it increases it s life “more abundantly.”
4. This life never dies; it is a living and incorruptible seed which abideth for ever. The life of saints on earth is the same as that of saints in heaven.
5. This life comes with believing.
(1) One person complains, “I cannot tell exactly when I was converted, and this causes me great anxiety.” Dear friend, this is a needless fear. Turn your inquiries in another direction--Are you alive unto God by faith? The date is a small matter.
(2) “Well,” says another, “but I hardly know how I was converted.” That again is minor matter. Our text does not state that the Bible was written that you and I might trace our faith in Christ to John, or to any one else. If you believe sincerely the mode in which you gained your faith need not be inquired into.
(3) “But I have such conflicts within,” cries one. Ah, there are no conflicts in dead men. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The quickening works:
Every man may be compared to a book, and every day adds a fresh page to it. Notice
I. THE RECORD. “These are written.”
1. The subjects of the publication are the wonderful works and sayings of our Lord. His deeds were such as no human power could accomplish. The miracles were performed
(1) As proofs of His Divinity.
(2) As acts of humanity.
(3) As illustrations of the works of salvation.
Their publicity is particularly mentioned in the text. They were done in the presence of the disciples. Imposture seeks concealment. The miracles said to every doubter, “Come and see.” Their number is also noted. “Many other signs.” And not only are the miracles recorded, but the savings. With what dignity, authority, power, does He speak!
2. The way by which the Divine will has been revealed has been by inspiring certain men to record it in writing. Many advantages are derived from this method--the advantages of
(1) Universality. A man’s writings reach further than his voice.
(2) Appeal. “To the law and the testimony” we appeal. This is the judge that ends strife.
(3) Security and permanence.
The uttered word perishes; the letter written remains. What do we know of ancient history but through books? Let us be thankful, then, for two great blessings--the Book written in our own tongue, and for ability to read it.
II. THE REASON. “These things are written that ye might believe”
1. In the real existence of Jesus. Some have been so sceptical as to doubt whether such a person ever lived. They never doubt the existence of Caesar or Mahommed. But have we not much stronger proof of the existence of Christ?
2. In the true character of Jesus.
(1) As the Christ.
(2) As the Son of God.
III. THE RESULT. Some write books for pecuniary ends. John wrote that we might have life--not animal or intellectual, but spiritual and eternal. There are five signs of life--sensibility, activity, appetency, appropriateness, superiority to gravitation. Have we these signs spiritually? (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Christ, the source of life:
I remember once conversing with a celebrated sculptor, who had been hewing out a block of marble to represent one of our great patriots--Lord Chatham. “There,” said he, “is not that a fine form?” “Now, sir,” said I, “can you put life into it? Else, with all its beauty, it is still but a block of marble.” Christ, by His Spirit, puts life into a beauteous image, and enables the man He forms to live to His praise and glory. (Rowland Hill.)
The development of spiritual life:
I plant many seeds in my garden from which I do not look for blossoms the year that I plant them. Yet I nourish them and transplant them; and when the days of November commence to cut them down, I take them up, roots and all, and hide them in a dark frost-proof dwelling for the winter. There they rest till the spring comes, when I go and take those buried roots and stems and bring them forth out of their grave, and put them into a better soil. And before September comes round in the second year of their growth, they will do what they had not time to do in the first. It takes two summers to get a blossom on many plants. It takes I know not how long a series of summers to develop the highest blossoms and the truest fruit that we can bear. God takes us from this life and hides us in the grave; and then, in His good time, transplants us in another soil. The work is not done in this life. It is not done when you are converted, or even when you have gone on for forty years. Such is the pattern of that work which God is carrying forward, such is the majesty of that manhood which He means shall yet flame in glory in us, that He cannot accomplish His purpose in the narrow compass of our present life; so He buries us over the winter of death, and then puts us in a better soil and a better summer to take our next growth. And what there is beyond these, “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive”; but doubtless there are to be serial developments, infinite and endless. (H. W. Beecher.)
Trusting in Christ a sign of life:
Suppose there is a person here who does not exactly know his age, and he wants to find the register of his birth, and he has tried and cannot find it. Now, what is the inference that he draws from his not being able to tell the day of his birth? Well, I do not know what the inference may be, but I will tell you one inference he does not draw. He does not say, therefore, “I am not alive.” If he did, he would be an idiot, for if the man is alive he is alive, whether he knows his birthday or not. And if the man really trusts in Jesus, and is alive from the dead, he is a saved soul, whether he knows exactly when and where he was saved or not. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Faith, the sign of life:
See you yonder battle-field strewn with the men who have fallen in the terrible conflict! Many have been slain, many more are wounded, and there they lie in ghastly confusion, the dead all stark and stiff, covered with their own crimson, and the wounded faint and bleeding, unable to leave the spot whereon they had fallen. Surgeons have gone over the field rapidly, ascertaining which are corpses beyond the reach of mercy’s healing hand, and which are men faint with loss of blood. Each living man has a paper fastened conspicuously on his breast, and when the soldiers are sent out with the ambulances to gather up the wounded, they do not themselves need to stay and judge which may be living and which may be dead; they see a mark upon the living, and lifting them up right tenderly they bear them to the hospital, where their wounds may be dressed. Now, faith in the Son is God’s infallible mark, which He has set upon every poor wounded sinner, whose bleeding heart has received the Lord Jesus; though he faints and feels as lifeless as though he were mortally wounded, yet he most surely lives if he believes, for the possession of Jesus is the token which cannot deceive. Faith is God’s mark, witnessing in unspeakable language, “This soul liveth.” Tenderly, ye who care for the broken-hearted, lift up this wounded one. Whatever else we cannot see, if a simple trust in Jesus is discernible in a convert, we need fear no suspicions, but receive him at once as a brother beloved. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Faith in Christ
Look at that locomotive as it snorts like a giant warhorse to its place in the station at the head of the train. You have in that engine power of amplest capacity to drag at swiftest pace the far-stretching carriages. Boiler, tubes, pistons, fire, steam--all are in perfect order; and that broad-brewed man gives assurance of tried ability to guide the charge committed to him. You look I carriage after carriage is filled, the hour has struck, the bell rung; and yet there is no departure, no movement, nor would be till “crack of doom,” if one thing remained as it now is. Aha! the lack is discovered; the uniting hooks that bind engine and train together were wanting. They have been supplied. Like two great hands they have clasped; and a screw has so riveted engine and carriage that they form, as it were, one thing, one whole; and away through the dark sweeps the heavy-laden train with its freight of immortals. Mark! no one ever supposes that it is the uniting hook, or link, or coupling, that draws the train. A child knows that it is the engine that draws it. Nevertheless, without that hook, or link, or coupling, all the power of the engine were of no avail; the train would stand still for ever. Exactly so is it in the relation of faith to Christ. It is not our faith that saves us, but Christ that saves us. (A. B.Grosart, D. D.)
Saving faith:
It is not the quantity of thy faith that shall save thee. A drop of water is as true water as the whole ocean; so a little faith is as true faith as the greatest. A child eight days old is as really a man as one of sixty years; a spark of fire is as true fire as a great flame; a sickly man is as truly living as a well man. So it is not the measure of thy faith that saves thee, it is the blood that it grips to that saves thee; as the weak hand of a child that leads the spoon to the mouth, will feed as well as the strong arm of a man; for it is not the hand that feeds thee, but the meat. So if thou canst grip Christ ever so weakly, He will not let thee perish. (T. Adams.)
Application of faith:
As it is no advantage for a wounded man to have the best medicine lying by his side unless it is applied to his wound, so little do the mercies of God profit us unless we have faith to apply them to our sinful hearts. (Cawdray.)
The gospel must be applied by faith
The other day a poor woman had a little help sent to her by a friend in a letter. She was in great distress, and she went to that very friend begging for a few shillings. “Why,” said the other, “I sent you money yesterday, by an order in a letter!” “Dear, dear!” said the poor woman, “that must be the letter which I put behind the looking-glass!” Just so; and there are lots of people who put God’s letters behind the looking-glass, and fail to make use of the promise which is meant for them. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Son of God:
God has many sons. The children of Israel were called His sons, the judges of the theocracy and angelic existences; but Christ is called the Son of God in a unique sense. He was unique
I. IN HIS AGE. He was “from everlasting,” “in the beginning with God,” “the First-born.”
II. IN HIS CONSTITUTION He was God in a human personality--God-Man. God is in all intelligences, in all creatures; but He was in Christ in a sense in which He is in no other, giving omnipotence to His arm, omniscience to His intellect, ubiquity to His presence.
III. IN HIS MISSION. He is the Mediator between God and man; the only Saviour. “There is none other name,” &c. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
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